1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image processing apparatuses and methods, and recording media having programs recorded therein. In particular, the present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method that obtain high quality image information by performing a reduced number of arithmetic operations, and to a recording medium having a program recorded therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
The assignee of the present invention has already proposed a technology (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-172621) in which a high resolution image is generated by using classification adaptive processing. In this proposed technology, the level of each pixel in each block having 3×3 pixels is binarized such that it is compared with the average of the levels of the pixels in the block, and the binarized level is compressed to four bits.
In addition, edges in horizontal and vertical directions are detected (2 bits for each), and, based on a total of eight bits of the edges (4 bits in total) and a level distribution pattern (4 bits), a class to which the block belongs is determined.
However, in the proposed technology, each input block having 3×3 pixels is necessarily classified into a single class. This results in a problem in that, when a class tap range is narrow, classes are mixed to cause deterioration in quality of a predictive image.
Conversely, when a broad class tap is used, a problem occurs in that the number of classes exponentially increases, so that it is difficult to obtain learning samples for obtaining coefficients for the classes.